colin davies wrote:

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Leigh fire and rescue on maneouveres at Pennington Flash today, including the rescue of these two from in front of Ramsdales hide. Why do they have to do it on the nature reserve part of the flash?

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They did the same last year except they stood on the end of the spit :( but to be truthful wherever on the flash you did this training,some birds will be disturbed ,at least it is hopefully just one day .  

Hi Volunteers, our next working party will be on Tuesday 15th November, 9-30 on the car park near to the toilet block. We will continue with the final part of the Birch and Willow removal from the Bickershaw ruck bank, above the lagoon. This piece of work is being done to hopefully encourage wild flower/plant growth.

As before it would be helpful if you could bring bow saws & loppers.

Thanks Craig for this message,this is so disappointing as only last week Joan Disley and I brought up the need for mowing of certain areas but at the correct time. I'll ring about it on Monday.

 

With Pennington i feel i'm banging my head against a brick wall, 

 

I posted John Tymon's post to the important people at the Council / Pennington and will do the same with this.

 

Please also report all incidences to the Golf Shop and they will log it.

People are again fishing In ramsdales reedbed today totally emptying Ramsdales scrapes and the top end of Ramsdales at one point nearly 600 duck were in the Air with Nowhere to land :( without rangers to watch over the flash the place will just degenerate ,its a shame to see it like this :(

-- Edited by JOHN TYMON on Saturday 8th of October 2016 09:14:15 PM

Up date sent to LEIGH O S members, Pennington Flash Volunteers and Council officials.

If you don't want these updates just let me know and ill remove your name. Hello everyone, first of all thank you to all who attended the first meeting this morning, or sent their apologies.

We talked about what we will be doing as volunteers around the site, what we won't be doing & health & safety.

We have a plan of action, initially to carry out tasks around the Nature Reserve and hides most of them are in a shocking state and are totally unhygienic. (not a great welcome to Leigh for visitors) It was noticed that over the last few weeks all hide maintenance has stopped, the supply of seed to the Bunting hide also, we will explore why this has happened.

Martyn Jones offered to set up a dedicated Facebook page for the group, and by magic he's done it already L.O.S. Pennington Flash Volunteer Group We will commence work on Tuesday 23 rd August and will meet on the car park as close as we can to the visitors center.

By this time i hope to have arranged free parking passes with the council and obtained some P.P.E. for you to ware.

But always come equipped with weather proof clothing and boots etc. A reminder will be sent out the week before.

PS since of meeting our group now numbers 32. David Shallcross Chairman,

Pennington Flash, the spit has been neglected this year as the weed control wasn't done and the Bunting Hide was like a tropical rain forest today, the vegetation is very high. I had a meeting this afternoon with 3 officers from Wigan Council, to discuss the sites future and how we as nature enthusiasts could help. It is now agreed to plan and go forward with an LOS volunteer group. This will still take a little time to set up for health and safety's sake alone. Some time ago i ask for people to let me know if they could give some time to this, to which i had an encouraging response, if you are still interested please let me know.

Sorry to continually be the harbinger of doom, but there were at least 3 people in the Teal hide early afternoon who were intimidating enough to make me decide to not go in. They were men in their mid-twenties, one sitting in the doorway, a second on a bench in the hide but looking through the door not the window and a third out of sight inside the hide. Music was blasting out of the hide and when I approached the one in the dooway said to the others "Here's a guy with binoculars". That was enough to make me decide to turn back. Obviously none of them had binoculars and they were clearly not birders. I didn't see any beer but it wouldn't have surprised me if they had some.

 

-- Edited by colin davies on Wednesday 27th of April 2016 09:09:50 PM

Two canoes right up to the reeds in the western end this evening flushed everything. I don't know if they are allowed to go this far, but I've never seen them there before.

some points from a discussion i had with mr M Fishwick last Thursday.  PLEASE REPORT issues to Him:_

Hello David,

 Please find below the bullet points from last weeks meeting.

 

·         Supply LOS with litter pickers, high viz vests, gloves, bin bags and RA for ad hoc litter picks.

·         Supply LOS with stock netting, fencing pliers, gloves, safety glasses and RA for ongoing minor fence repairs.

·         Review bird feeding locations within the reserve with LOS preferring a phased reduction to one feeding location (Bunting Hide).

·         Return cages over feeders to deter squirrels.

·         Propose Bunting hide tidy up as Council Volunteer project in partnership with LOS.

·         Look at s106 (public open space) monies for habitat management.

·         Discuss Pennington Flash projects with Community Reparation.

·         Work on the screen has started.

·         Only use whole peanuts within the feeders.

 

Regarding litter, it was felt that the reserve as a whole was kept free of litter, the situation along Pennington Line was unknown

 

Illegal angling has reared its head again, no angling signage is still in place, I will pick this up with the EA and the angling club.

 

Regards

 

Michael

 

Michael Fishwick
Greenspace Development Officer
Resources Directorate

Wigan Council

Leisure and Property Division
Town Hall,

Wigan WN1 3DS
486908
www.wigan.gov.uk
www.twitter.com/wigancouncil
www.facebook.com/WiganCouncilOnline

-- Edited by David Shallcross on Monday 11th of April 2016 07:39:42 PM

Reports again today of people fishing from the islands in Ramsdale scrapes all afternoon -Its a crying shame what happening at Penny at the moment :(

 

David Shallcross wrote:

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Hi John i'm just back from two weeks away, i will send your comments to the people at Wigan who need to know. But please always report things of this nature to the golf shop people as a start, it needs to logged if nothing else.

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Cheers Dave

It Was reported to the person onsite about the fishermen, im sure everyone knows about the Mink as they have been seen by everyone in the last few weeks ,so the onsite people will im sure have been told by the people who can get there every day - Bill ,Barry  etc who speak to them in the hides. I think theres quite a few Mink as they are being seen all over the place at almost the same times.

cheers John

-- Edited by JOHN TYMON on Sunday 27th of March 2016 04:40:13 PM

Bad news for the Ground nesting birds at Pennington ,A large adult Mink has been seen at the front of Horrocks Hide twice this week

 

Gordon Newman wrote:

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Again 3 teenagers fishing in Ramsdales actuallly in the water @ 17.15. can the access path not be blocked?

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They were wading into Ramsdales all weekend ,I did report it to the person on site from the council, as far as I can see ,there's very little else we can do, if the council don't have people to protect the nature reserve and the fishing club ,don't police where people fish apart from a few temporary signs that have been in 6 months, its becoming a losing battle . The Illegal fishermen know they shouldn't be there ,but they know ,no one will do anything ,so they carry on.

Someone fishing on the islands off ramsdales scrape moved all  the birds from ramsdales and scrape area. reported later to a Wigan metro employee

-- Edited by JOHN TYMON on Saturday 12th of March 2016 07:07:02 PM

Travellers have now left great clean up job by wigan council well done back to normal. :)

-- Edited by JOHN TYMON on Monday 7th of March 2016 01:24:39 PM

As mentioned before - I sent an email to my local councillors and MP about the state of country parks in Wigan. To be fair my Councillor has come up against a bit of a wall, but my MP did forward my letter to Wigan Leisure Culture Trust (or whatever it is called now). The first reply I found a little weak, and so responded back. The second reply was better but still, in my opinion left a few questions unanswered. The guy from WLCT (not Graham Workman - think it was his boss) did say he was happy for me to share his response here, but unfortunately I seem to have binned it with some other mail - if I manage to find it I'll see if Ian can come up with a way to share it. However in essence he said that there were plans to do 'stuff' to improve the state of the parks, however cuts have made it very difficult.

Personally I'd encourage everyone to write to their Councillors and MP's, as the only way to make the the situation better is to get the council to change how much cash they are willing to spend.

David Shallcross wrote:

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Good point John, the hide is mainly close because of the charts and info on the walls that have been vandalised in the past.

I will mention it at PFUG meeting in early February

P.S. I think there is a clause in the contract between the council and the the providers, that it be used for educational purposes only ????? will check it out

-- Edited by David Shallcross on Sunday 31st of January 2016 09:23:56 AM

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Cheers Dave It was open for the first 10 years, so not sure what made the change come about, and I know vandals can wreck things ,but as a whole ,it seems a waste to have such a good Hide not being used, as I haven't seen it used why ive been there for a few years now . :)

It would be good if both parts of teal Hide could again be opened every day like it used to be ,It seems a shame to have such a large hide always closed ,to be used just a few times a year by school parties. Yesterday there were plenty looking for the Bittern at the teal Hide ,but unfortunately no seats and there were quite a few older people standing at the back trying to view when next door there's a 18 foot empty hide with plenty seats available.

-- Edited by JOHN TYMON on Sunday 31st of January 2016 09:09:22 AM

A recent donation of bird food and feeders was gratefully received from Paul Brady, this will help with the huge cost of food used throught the year. Thank you Paul and the RSPB 

some of us will be out Christmas morning delivering the birds presents at Pennington, thanks and happy Christmas to everyone who offered their help with this.

A very ingenious device Paul, thanks for highlighting it. And Pennington can always use free bird seed, the bill at the moment is over £100 a month

Interesting discussion! I can quite see that culling has huge practical problems - and I sympathise with Ian's point of view that we were the ones who created the problem.


Replacing the cages over the tables has to be the simplest option. As far as photography is concerned it's far more rewarding to grab opportunities to photograph birds when they alight on branches and tree trunks on the way to and from the tables, looking much more natural.

Ideally, I'd like to see the squirrels dispatched. However, there are just too many problems with this:

- PF as a whole probably hosts hundreds, and removing say 20 from the feeding area would just create a vacuum for the others to fill. Removing them from the whole site is just not practical. The other site I mentioned is fairly isolated & gated, so a culling programme on the day it's closed can be effective

- the law is strict about capturing squirrels. Once captured, they must be dispatched soon, and ONLY by a blow to the head or by shooting in the trap, or done by a vet. Drowning them is illegal. Re-releasing them is illegal (as pointed out earlier)

- shooting them is plausible, but gun laws & public places do not mix well, even if you have the appropriate licences. There's always a chance the police & therefore an ARU team might get interested (as an aside, a certain Yorkshire ringer I know reported some guys to the police - they were shooting Canada's, and didn't expect a helicopter ARU to intervene. Extra laundry needed, I suspect)

- kiddies love them, but could see them elsewhere. Ok, but if the press got wind of a culling programme ...

- poisoning doesn't seem to be practical any more, and handling poisons & dealing with poisoned animals is not easy. And what about scavengers such as foxes ...

More info here:
http://www.rsne.org.uk/squirrels-and-law
http://basc.org.uk/game-and-gamekeeping/advice-and-fact-sheets/basc-grey-squirrel-control

Ian McKerchar wrote:

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............With a little effort and some ingenuity surely more squirrel proof solutions for mitigating a loss of seed could be found rather than attempting to eradicate the 'problem'; a 'problem' which will certainly continue regardless as other squirrels move in to take over the vacant territories anyway. Shouldn't we at least try a longer term alternative first?...........

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 With a little bit of ingenuity I am sure that an RSPB tilting squirrel baffle could be adapted to fit on the poles that hold the bird tables, thus hopefully preventing the squirrels actually getting to the food from below.